By Patrick McGroarty
Reporter Staff

For more than 20 years, Bishop Mauro Muldoon, OFM has presided over the Juticalpa diocese of Honduras. The Franciscan priest, 68, has founded a Catholic university, quelled heated disputes over logging rights, and steered his remote diocese through the destruction of Hurricane Mitch.

But to Neponset neighbors who knew him when, the Bishop will always be simply "Tucker."

"Mauro is a name I took with my vows," explains Muldoon. "My name is Thomas Andrew, and my family and everybody in the neighborhood called me 'Tucker,' like Tommy Tucker."

Muldoon grew up in Neponset, playing stickball and working as a delivery boy for the Dorchester Citizen. He also developed a rabid devotion to the Red Sox, which he maintains to this day (he has NESN games beamed into his Honduran home via satellite). He attended St. Ann's grade school and then Christopher Columbus high school, a Franciscan Italian school in the North End.

"It started as a regional school to help kids in the North End get an education instead of becoming criminals," remembers Bill Duffy, who has remained friends with Muldoon since their days at Columbus. "As it turned out, about three kids in our class were from the North End and the rest were from the Irish suburbs."

Attracted to the Franciscan message and lifestyle, both Muldoon and Duffy entered the seminary of the Immaculate Conception province of Franciscans in upstate New York.

"Mauro was a tremendous person, and a good student," said Fr. Armand Pedula, who taught him theology. "In Honduras he's extremely popular, very ministerial, and really does an awful lot of good for the people."

Pedula, a Bostonian, remembered that Muldoon and Duffy remained close, though Duffy ultimately left the seminary. Muldoon was ordained on June 11, 1966 and immediately volunteered for missionary service. He spent some time in Guatemala and El Salvador, but by 1970 he was permanently living in the Honduran state of Olancho, where the capital Juticalpa is also the diocese' namesake. Roughly the size of Massachusetts, the diocese is home to over 450,000 Catholics and has only 72 miles of paved roads. The people of Juticalpa, said Muldoon, have a great reverence for the Catholic faith, but their lives are rife with hardship.

"Olancho is famous in Honduras like the wild west, cowboy country, with gung slingers and all that," Muldoon said. "Because of the weak justice system people have to take the law into their own hands."

When Muldoon arrived in the 1970s, there were six parishes and four Catholic priests in the sprawling diocese. Muldoon has changed that, first as a missionary and, since 1983, as the Bishop of Juticalpa.

"In the last 20 years, my priorities have been to rebuild parishes, foster vocations, and improve education, in that order," said Muldoon.

Muldoon founded the Catholic University campus of Juticalpa six years ago. Today, enrollment is close to 500, and a feeder system of high schools and grade schools is also in the works.

"There are lots of social problems in Latin America, but education is the big one. If you solve education, you solve lots of problems," he said.

ON THE HOMEFRONT

While Muldoon was building schools and quelling social unrest in Honduras, most of his friends and family were moving from Neponset. But some, like Tom Long of Gallivan Boulevard, remain. Over the years, said Long, "Tucker" has made it back to the states often enough to preside at his wedding and baptize four of his five children.

"I remember once my mother was giving us soup, and she said to him, 'Tucker, do you want some crackers,' and through me he said, 'yea.' He used to have to talk through me, he was so shy," Long remembered.

Long said he sees Muldoon about once a year, usually when he preaches at St. Ann's to raise money for Honduras. Bostonians, said Muldoon, have been huge supporters of his work, in particular his old friend Bill Duffy.

After leaving the seminary, Duffy married and founded a construction company in Winchester. He also coordinated to have millions of dollars in donated medical supplies shipped to Muldoon's parishes each year. When Duffy sold his company several years ago, he became increasingly involved in his friend's ministry.

In 1998, Hurricane Mitch struck Honduras, killing more than 22,000 people in mudslides and flash flooding. The storm devastated Muldoon's rural diocese, but it also prompted an unprecedented flow of aid from his friends back in Massachusetts as well as new sister Diocese in Fort Worth and Austin, Texas. In Massachusetts, Duffy arranged to have more than 50 containers of medicine and construction equipment shipped to the diocese.

Several months later, Duffy drove out to Hyde Park early on a Saturday morning to an auction of Boston's dilapidated fleet of busses. Duffy approached the auctioneer about a row of undesirable busses and explained that he wanted them for a college in Honduras. The auctioneer said he'd have to ask at city hall, so Duffy paid a visit to the procurement office.

Later, he found out that his request had made its way all the way to Mayor Thomas Menino.

"The mayor said, 'we're going to have to pay someone to take those buses away. Let him have whatever he wants,'" Duffy recalled. "They were old, and Fords were known to have brake problems, mechanical problems. But for beggars, we couldn't be choosers."

He also convinced a shipping company with docks in South Boston to waive the $5,000 per bus it would normally cost to ship to Honduras. Within weeks, the 500 students at the University of Juticalpa had four new buses.

Three years ago, Duffy's wife Mary passed away. In his loss, he again found hope through his connection to Honduras. "The bishop came home towards the end, because he knew she wasn't going to make it much longer. I asked him if it would be possible to build a church in my wife's honor in Honduras. He said, 'of course.' "

Just days later, Muldoon returned to Honduras to conduct a confirmation ceremony at a remote mountaintop parish. When he arrived at the Honduran airport, a priest who had come to take him to the ceremony asked if a church could be built for the 150 families living on this mountain.

One year later, Our Lady of Guadelupe Church was completed, dedicated to Duffy's wife Mary. Duffy traveled from Massachusetts for the July 10, 2004 ceremony, his fourth trip to Muldoon's diocese. He saw the steep mountainside up which donkeys had carried sand, one five-hour cartload at a time, and the church steeple from which a bell donated with funds raised by Fr. Foley of St. Ann's would one day hang.

Bishop Muldoon is in the middle of a two-week stint preaching at parishes in Texas and Florida, but he'll back in the Boston area in June to celebrate the 40th anniversary of his ordination. That celebration will take place Saturday, June 3, at St. Joseph's parish in Holbrook.